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The Program

PHILADELPHIA – In 2000, three janitors at the football building at Pennsylvania State University saw Jerry Sandusky engaged in activities that one said he found more upsetting than the worst combat injuries he witnessed in the Korean War.

This janitor watched Sandusky pinning a young boy inside a locker-room shower and performing oral sex on him.

At the time, none of the janitors said anything to anyone.

Bringing bad PR to coach Joe Paterno “would have been like going against the president of the United States in my eyes. … Football runs this university,” one worker told investigators this month as part of the independent report on the sex-abuse scandal at the university. (SOURCE)

Does that make anyone else as sick as it makes me? That is what heard them report on the radio yesterday and I couldn’t believe it. Someone mentioned not hurting “The Program”. What?!? Let’s get some perspective here. These men, who witnessed the Korean War saw what they described as something far worse. They were so afraid of “The Program” that they didn’t want to lose their jobs.

So “The Program” trumped the safety, physical and emotional wellbeing of small children…for the rest of their lives.

“The Program” was used as a place to abuse children by a sadistic predator.

“The Program” protected this predator with complete disregard for children.

Let me ask you a question, if you were ANYWHERE and witnessed someone so much as hit a small child, wouldn’t you make sure it didn’t happen again? Wouldn’t you go to any length to protect that child? What kind of world are we living in where we’ve allowed “The Program” to be raised to this status?

I’m not a Penn State fan, or much of a college football fan to be honest. I bleed Carolina Blue. I can tell you, without reservation, that if this ever happened at Chapel Hill, I would burn my gear and anything else I have with their colors on it. If it was the much respected, well loved Dean Smith involved, I would call for a renaming of his arena and anything else associated with him. We’re talking about children. We’re talking about the unthinkable here.

UNC had their share of NCAA violations last year. Parking tickets, phone calls and tutors. Their paying for their sins with lost scholarships and a black eye on “The Program”. OSU had their own issues too. But as far as I know, no small children were involved. I’m not justifying, I’m just as sick about those and there is no scale. Wrong is wrong. Yet small children, being abused in a manner that I didn’t even want to quote in this post is just horrible.

I don’t get a say in this mess but if I did, I vote they allow the current players to transfer without having to sit out a year. Shut “The Program” down. Allow the University to feel the financial strain of a loss of “The Program”. Sales from gear go directly to a charity (much like the one that Sandusky used as a cover) to underprivileged children and those that have been sexually abused. Make “The Program” an engine for something positive in the aftermath of the unthinkable.

My prayers go out to every single person that was a victim of this atrocious abuse. May we never see this again. Ever.